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Brutally slow week for us on eBay. We’re in NYC for two weeks so our store is set for “Time Away”. The lack of sales might be a combination of the del
[See the full post at: The Numbers: Week July 28 – August 3, 2024] -
Enjoy your well earned vacation to NYC. I hope you find great stuff on the curb and at the West Elm clearance section! I had decent sales while on vacation but it has totally dropped off after returning. ASP down by half too. I wasn’t able to list this week but hopefully it will pick up again soon.
Total Listings in Store: 878
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $285.60 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $21.59 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes) – this is due to shipping costs after vacation on the previous week’s sales.
Cost of Items Sold: $42
Highest Price Sold: $44 cabinet knob set
Average Price Sold: $21.97
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0I plan to do some live selling this week hopefully clearing some clothing in particular. The garage is in chaos with all Ebay out of the house! Definitely need to remedy that. It will be interesting to try the flea market on Thursday. The space rental is a lot cheaper vs the vintage market. Some things going on with the kids but plan to get back to Ebay listing. Ebay started sending me emails bugging me to finish my drafts about 3 weeks ago.
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You know we’re all about the clearance section. I feel it’s less fun these days though. Stores are getting better at inventory management.
Good luck at the flea market. Be interested in how it goes.
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I agree. I’ve been looking at RA during the big sales and either I’m getting cheaper or it’s not as good of an opportunity as it used to be, or both. I only bought a couple of things before the 4th. Macys.com did some deep discounting but those products have moved more slowly than my favorite brands so I haven’t tried that again. They put an outlet area in our local Macys upstairs but it’s like the TJ Maxx pricing, not stellar. My Target RA also stopped moving so quickly but it always sells over time. The designer basically recycles the same ideas for the most part so maybe it’s become saturated or people have just learned to grab it when they see it in the store.
Yeah, I’m shopping this flea usually and not really paying attention to who is there. I’m told the college kids come after they get up at 11. Want to try this before they go back to school. I’ve been told buyers here are cheap by the traveling vendors. It’s a lot easier to pack up with clothes and I’ll be allowed to put the cheap stuff on tarps.
I’ve been thinking more and more about Facebook Marketplace. I did really well flipping all that stuff I thrifted for my daughter’s outdoor movie party. We are pretty conveniently located and I have a covered porch. I just am not sure I really want people coming around to the house much and I definitely don’t want to deal with meet ups.
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Items in Store: 3143
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $1,657.00
COGS: $141.00
Total Profit: $1,516.00
Average profit: $50.53
Average sales price: $55.23
New Listings: 92
Items scavenged: 16
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 38
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,465.97
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 32
2024 ASP $45.17
2024 projected total sales $76,230.32So I had this big pile of vintage toys and randomness I got from a guy who used to have a vintage toy/card shop. I decided to list ALL of it this week. I still have a few things to photograph, but I did get all the listings created. It felt good to get it all done, but at the same time it kind of frustrated me to put more low dollar items into my store. Will I make a bunch of money? Yes. Did it really take that long? No. When I’m in the zone I can research, organize, and list things very quickly.
Here’s an example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266932019678
Homies Palmeros Italian Figures You pick
I had a giant box of these guys in vending capsules, with a few random other things mixed in. Initially I thought it would be a monumental task to deal with these. I pondered a few paths on how to tackle this.
Finally I decided to sort it to see what I had. It only took 20 minutes to remove them all from capsules and sort into unique pieces. I only had one complete set of 24 and someone flooded the market recently with cheap complete sets. So listing individually was the best path. I found a website that had the names of each of the 24 characters from this set and created a spreadsheet to assign quantities and to have data to cut/paste to build my variance listing. Then I flew through my photos real quick and got the listing created. Total time of work was about an hour. It will take a long time to sell them, but profit will be amazing. It would have been real easy to analyze this lot to death and spend multiple hours. I could have also just listed the whole lot for $100-150 unsorted and been done with it.
I also listed a HUGE amount of vintage mcdonalds toys. Once it was all said & done…I kinda wish I wouldn’t have picked them up. They were dirt cheap though and I was hoping there were some valuable ones there…there weren’t. But again, my regretful buy will still score me hundreds of dollars over time.
The other thing that bums me is I was hoping to develop a contact through that buy I’ve tried to establish communication with the guy but no response. Oh well.
Yard sales were weak this week due to some rain, but I did score some vintage cabbage patch dolls and a bunch of high end women’s boots.
Next weekend is the huge city wide yard sale near me. There will be 140+ sales along my normal route.
I have the store going in the right direction approaching Q4. I’ll just keep plugging away and I’m really wanting to hit $80k sales this year. I’m in a prime position to get there.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 1 items for $65.
Strange week. Nobody wanted my premium items but I sold a bunch of high dollar non-premium items. It would have been an EPIC week if I could have done both.
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Items in Store: 15,263
Items Sold: 123 (Up 1.7% from previous week)
Total Sales: $1,199.26 (Down 4.1% from previous week)
Net Sales: $700.04 (Down 6.4% from previous week)
Average Sales Price: $9.75 (Down 5.6% from previous week)
Cost Of Goods Sold: Roughly $100
Number of Items Listed: 210 -
I was also in NY city from yesterday through today. I took my daughter to a play on Sunday, decided to stay overnight, and went to an independent movie theater today.
It was a generally sucky but normal summer week for me as well. I had two different sales where I got low offers but decided to take them anyway (after some negotiating).
My high sale was something I bought in an online auction years ago, like maybe 2018 or so. Originally, I couldn’t figure out how to focus the image. I finally took a second look at it and ends up you just have to move the projection tube in and out of the case. I listed it just a couple of weeks ago, and it sold very quickly.
Week of Jul 28 – Aug 3
Total Items in Store: 1732 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 13 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $13 + $15 Commission
Total Sales: $231.83 eBay
Highest Price Sold: eBay $35 for Artograph Designer Art Projector
Average price: $17.83
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0 -
Message of the week right here!
buyer was upset that after they took 4 days to pay that I didn’t ship immediately even though I have 2 business day handling time.
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Lowlife you’re not even worth the food to eat your money worshiper that’s why when you pass away you’re not gonna take one dollar with you you a hole
“
it should be noted that this buyer also tried to talk me down on price AFTER purchase. LOL! I was really looking forward to that unpaid cancellation.
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Bummer, might have been a good idea to cancel the order and report the buyer, unless you had already shipped. I wonder if he will try something after he receives the package?
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My numbers this week are mostly the result of cleaning up my listings last Sunday. For the first time in almost four months, I took a good look at my inventory and really went through all of the 300ish listings in my store. Here was my whole process, which took about an hour total.
I ended about 200 of those listings (most had 0 or 1 watcher) and did sell similar on 150 of them. I lowered prices on about half of these listings. Raised a few prices and kept the others the same. Changed around a few keywords in titles and made sure I had promoted listings on for all of them. I filter my store by current price and end all the 19.99 listings in one batch, all the 29.99 listing next and so on. That’s the key step which speeds up the whole process.
I sold 48 items last week and my net sales were slightly higher than my normal weekly total. I was away at this time one year ago so my numbers look great in comparison to last year, but it doesn’t make sense to compare a time away week to a regular week. But this was a strong week for my store in late July, and I’m happy about the time spent. Before my regular numbers, here are my end and sell similar numbers.
I sold 21 items over the course of the week which were part of the end and sell similar batches, and then I stopped keeping track on Friday because I got tired of it! 15 of those 21 sold were under $30, and 10 of them were listings where I cut the price, usually by $10. 18 of the items either sold for full price, or through an offer I sent to interested buyers at 20% off. I had just one repeat buyer all week when I usually get three or four, but I’m not sure if that’s important or not.
What I am sure about is that I need to make end, reprice, and sell similar a regular part of my eBay practice once every few months. So now I have a reminder in my calendar to do this again in November. If you do the same, let me know how it goes.
7/28/2024 to 8/3/2024
Items in store: 277 (up from 259 two weeks ago)
Items sold: 48 — 25 via best offer, 16 via seller initiated offer, 32 via advertising
Gross sales: $2038.33 (up 116% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1297.04 (up 140% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $42.47 (down 1% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $128.34 — Maxx Crosby auto autograph jersey card /99 2022 Panini Rookies & Stars Raiders
Lowest price sold (net): $8.03 — Mitchell Parker auto autograph card 2020 Panini Prizm Draft silver EX Nationals
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It’s pretty incredible what you’re doing with such a small inventory. You really have an eye for what people want. Out of those 300 items, is it still mainly trading cards? I know you were experimenting with hard goods.
For the kind of stuff we’re selling, I just cant ever imagine having that kind of sell through rate no matter how much we lowered the price.
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Out of those 300 items, is it still mainly trading cards?
Yes, but it’s starting to shift somewhat. Basically my eBay inventory is 33% “best of the best” individual cards from my consignment port and weekly purchases, 33% my curated card lots and 33% other stuff. Most of the “other stuff” is sports-related, right now, since 99% of my scavenging this year has come from searching the big card consignment sellers auctions every week. It’s still cards that make up the bulk of my business. But sometimes these big sellers list other items, and if the value’s there, I’ve been buying them. It’s nice to branch out a little bit, and gives me confidence for how I can continue to grow my business. Lately, I’ve been doing well with signed full-sized sports jerseys. I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means, but I’m learning.
For the kind of stuff we’re selling, I just cant ever imagine having that kind of sell through rate no matter how much we lowered the price.
Your podcast taught me that long tail items are always worth holding if you have the space, and part of having a successful business is learning to make the space to hold onto something for a while. Some items you will just have to wait: not only for the perfect buyer to find your listing, but for the time when they have enough fun money to spend on your item. Sometimes that will take six months, a year, even longer. But some profits are worth waiting for.
Even with long-tail items, I think it makes sense to end your old listings every few months. Make sure they look good and they’re priced right, then put them back into your inventory with sell similar so they get a new item number. After a few months, it seems like a lot of listings can fall into this eBay void where they only receive 1 or 2 views over a thirty day period. I’ve noticed it in my store in every category I’ve sold in. Having a small space for storage, and finally starting to get a handle on consistently keeping myself organized, has made me get more analytical about my business. Why do certain items end up in my death piles, and how can I keep that from happening? How much space will certain items take up, what’s worth the space and what isn’t?
I’m still figuring out the answers to these questions. This type of thinking always felt very overwhelming to me. All I could ever really think about was: how do I keep the pipeline flowing so sales keep coming in? But I guess I have gotten to the point where I can start to focus a little more about the bigger picture and how to improve my processes. I didn’t plan to start thinking about this stuff, it just started happening naturally.
I have realized this year that I would rather sell something today for 66% of my target price, even 50%, than sit on it for a year and maybe sell for full price, maybe for a best offer at 75% of my BIN, or maybe it won’t sell then either. But that equation is not set in stone. It’s going to change as my goals for my business come into focus. I have a lot of nice items somewhere in the listing pipeline, and all my organizing means I will have some nice flat rate sized boxes of stuff to sell as well. Mainly boxes of cards, but some other stuff like books and bobbleheads too. I’d love to get to 500 listings in my store by end of September, and then we’ll see how high my sell through rate can go in Q4.
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July 28-Aug 3, 2024
Total Items in Store: 4396 listings for 6829 items
Items Sold: 51
Gross Sales: $3305.10 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2317.49
Cost of Items Sold: $680 ($278 mine / $402 consignors)
Highest Price Sold: $260 Kiton Pants
Average Price Sold: $64.81
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $753
Number of items listed this week: 90 -
Enjoy NYC – you always find some interesting scavenges. Do you still change your shipping time or just do Time Away? I’m headed to McLean, hoping to run into some high end garage sales while I am there!
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How to turn flour into a sliced and wrapped loaf in three hours.
I guess that bread slicer’s going to a boutique bakers. Prices in the UK are (equivalent) 1 dollar for industrial bread, between 4 and 8 dollars for the decent stuff.
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